Some Districts Learn Motivation from Alec Baldwin

June 25, 2008 in Personal Reflection, Reading Response
Tags: alec, baldwin, cadillac, classroom, edublog, edublogosphere, education, film, fired, glen, glengarry, jack, knives, lemmon, metaphor, motivation, movie, not safe for work, nsfw, rant, ross, speech, steak, teacher, teachers, you're, youtube

Technically, the following video is not safe for work. Personally, I think it’s perfect for work.

During Alec Baldwin’s tirade against the failing quality of this particular office, salesman Jack Lemmon responds with excuses.

The leads are weak, Lemmon says.

You’re weak, Baldwin says.

In this short clip from Glengarry Glen Ross — spoilers ahead — this exchange describes much of the working world, and most professions.

Let’s use education.

So many educators make excuses, as they try to make do with the alleged students in their classes. Some favorite excuses: It’s the family life at home; it’s the socioeconomic level; it’s that they’re learning English as a second language. Alec Baldwin character, transposed to education, could care less about these excuses.

In the movie, it’s Lemmon’s job to sell real estate. In education, it’s your job to teach children content, at the very least. but you’re having trouble with the group of kids you have, over at that urban school district. In this transposition, you are Lemmon.

Baldwin comes from downtown. He doesn’t care. Why aren’t your kids passing? You are a teacher: Teach. It isn’t that hard. They’re showing up, and are just waiting to learn. He knows: He has years of experience in education.

In the movie, when Lemmon gets a lead, he is paid to sell property to that investor. When you get children — sometimes you even get students — you are paid to teach them, whoever they are. That’s the bottom line, says Superintendent Baldwin.

Professionals can do it easily. If you can’t do it, you aren’t a professional.

No ifs. No ands. No buts.

Even late in his rant, Baldwin’s mentality easily translates to the teaching profession: I do have some positions at Glen Ross Unified, that golden, trouble-free district in a wealthy part of Florida — but you can’t have even interview for them. That district is for teachers, and you peons aren’t very good teachers at all if you can’t teach who you have, already. If your students right now aren’t learning, you can’t teach anyone.

There are a lot of Baldwin characters angry at education in this country. They don’t care about your excuses. They care about your results. If you don’t have results, you’re worthless. Excuses just prove it, and so Lemmon does himself a disservice by offering up his excuses.

Yet some excuses are legitimate. Sometimes, just sometimes, the cards are as stacked against you as you claim they are. That students have a rocky home life is important, and does affect the effectiveness of your teaching. That students can’t speak much less read English, yet, will affect their score on the test. When the cards are stacked against you, you really can’t do anything about it.

As Lemmon finds out at the end of the movie, this was exactly the case. The cards were almost purposefully stacked against him, and Baldwin isn’t his enemy. He had been all-but doomed even before Baldwin showed up and made all that noise.

To wit: In both the movie and the field of education, Baldwin’s appearance didn’t raise the difficulty of success. It raised the stakes of failure.

First prize: Cadillac. Second prize: steak knives. Third prize: you’re fired.

That’s motivation.

Half-of-Class from Half-of-Hell, Second Half

April 6, 2008 in Personal Reflection
Tags: attention, bad, benchmark, charismatic, class, classroom, crowded, desk, desks, education, five, half, horrible, master, master teacher, more, not, obnoxious, packed, part 2, parts, period, real, rsp, sophomores, standardized tests, student, student teacher, teacher, test, testing, than, the test, worse, you're

It’s my water bottle. Quiet.

No it isn’t.

Be quiet and do your test or leave.

Okay.

He left, very noisily bouncing his basketball on his way out. The RSP coach left her assigned student, writing Mr. Balla up for referral to a vice principal.

Because he never shows up, I didn’t even know what name to tell her to put on the referral. Naturally.

This class is usually trouble, as the RSP coach is well aware. She’s been here before. Patronizingly, she leans and whispers hoarsely into my ear.

I know they’re bad and how you’re just a student teacher, so maybe I might have an idea that will help you. All the ringleaders are next to the window, so maybe a seating chart? I don’t know if you’ve thought of it.

Yes, I have. Given a warning, they behave themselves just enough so I don’t have pretext to mess with the seating chart. I would have told her that, but she went on to repeat herself for a good minute or two, in the same patronizing whisper. She tells me nothing I don’t already know, nothing I haven’t already thought of.

I’ve already asked myself: Is there something I’m doing wrong, something so seemingly small or insignificant that I don’t even remember it, or to mention it here in the blog? I don’t suppose the reader would know the answer to that question.

This is the same class where even one would-be gangster who shows up regularly will very casually bump into me while walking by, where two girls who love talking back will waddle in five minutes past the lunch bell, noisily slurping their Icee.

I can’t very well lay down the law — my master teacher never minded these habits at all, and the students know he’s really the teacher of record. I’ll be the mean teacher and lose the efficacy I already have.

They can sense that he knows what he’s doing and I don’t. Every week, someone in fifth period tells me:

You’re not a real teacher.

With less than a month of instruction left, it’s too late to fix this class. I just can’t shake the feeling that it would have been so much easier if I had started off the year with them, rather than coming in halfway.